Seo

I have created a website using xhtml and would like some information on the best techniques to use to get the site onto google.

I heard that alt tags shouldn't be used. Is this true and does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks for any comments, i need all the help I can get.

Alt tags are for images and are a wonderful thing. And its true that valid and semantic markup combined with the seperation of design and content and of course good use of copy will indeed boost your search engine rankings. Whoever said alt tags shouldn't be used probably is a MS Frontpage user tee hee.

__________________

I think one of the best ways to get your site ranked highly is to get one-way inbound links to your site from other high PR sites. How you do that is a different matter and can be quite hard

I have always thought that alt tags were a good thing but I think your right moojoo that the comment came from a frontpage user.

I have heard other sites mentioning about using links to the site but I think that could be pretty difficult to arrange.

Is it worth paying to get it onto google through sites that say they can have it on there in a couple of days?

This is the link to the site I have created for a local company
www.akbloftconversions.co.uk
Is there anything I can do with the coding without changing the design to help with seo.

Thanks for your comments!!

1) Use Text Links
2) Put ur css in a separate file
3) Make use of H1 tags and title tags

For example put Loft Conversion Specialists as your h1 tag

If I wanted to use text links instead of images, how would I get the same effect as at the moment (the rectangle in its current position that have a rollover image)?

I would do it by just saying, <div id="nav"><a href="#">Link</a></div> and in the css you would have #nav a {background-color:red; color:white; size:16pt; text-decoration:none;}
and then #nav a:hover {background-color:lightred;}


and that should work

and for the titles... <h1>AKB Loft Conversion Specialist</h1>, CSS: h1 {background-color:lightgray;}. And that would go where you have that image now

Jah, that nav list should be an unordered list and span the width of the sidebar too. simple display:block; some padding, maybe a bottom border or margin.. yeah that is how it should be.

Something like this.

#nav {
padding:0;
margin:0;
}

#nav li {
list-style-type:none;
text-align:center;
}

#nav li a {
display:block;
width:188px;
padding:8px 0 8px 0;
background-color:#000;
}

<ul id="nav">
<li><a href="">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="">About AKB</a></li>
<li><a href="">Loft Styles</a></li>
<li><a href="">Conversions</a></li>
<li><a href="">Contact Us</a></li>
</ul>

and for IE add a width:100% on the li's to eliminate extra spacing between them or something.

__________________

Il have a go at that tomorrow.

Thanks for your help. Its appreciated from a new designer

yeah moojoos is a lot better, it should be a list

One good method is to look at your page with any styles, images and JavaScript disabled. If it looks organized and is easy to read, you're one step ahead of the competition that uses tables and too many images.

One-way links are awesome, but you usually have to pay for them if they're not on a link spam page. If your link appears beside 200 others, chances are, it won't be very useful for page ranks.

Stymiee on SitePoint wrote an extremely useful guide to SEO in general and how to get a good PageRank and how to get some decent traffic and inbound-links.

Some quick things to remember.

• Validate your XHTML and CSS
• Optimize your <title> codes for each webpage
• Use <h1> correctly and only once
• Put text-links in forum signatures to generate a bit more traffic
  

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182915

That goes in-depth to some things including myths of Google and illegalities like Black-hat and other things.

Don't expect instant results though, it can take a long time to get indexed into Google and get a good ranking.

Thanks for all your help. Im just in the process of changing all the areas that everyone has recommended so fingers crossed that I might be up-on google soon.
Thanks again

Time is one of the most important things I think. I have a site that's been around for ages, but never done anything with regards to SEO and it's got a PR of 5. Google liked something, but the longer your site's around, the better off you are, too.

another factor his how long a period you bought your domain for, if u only have it for 1 year goggle wont like it as much as if you had it for 5 years. Link exchanges with highly ranked sites is, i believe a gd way to get started aswell

Tags are very important. Though search engines say that they are not considering the tags while ranking the site but the well validated sites ranks good in search engines.

With regards,
Mandar Thosar

meta tags should be in the <head> no? :

"<meta name="keywords" content="akb loft conversions; akb; loft; conversions; leeds" />
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>AKB Loft Conversion Specialists</title>

I hear keyword density is another thing to look for.... So you may end up juggling with your content text if you choose to follow this way.